The fundamental steps of processing color photographic light-sensitive materials generally include a color development step and a desilvering step. In the color development step, exposed silver halide is reduced with a color development agent to form silver and the oxidized color developing agent reacts with a color former (coupler) to yield a dye image. In the subsequent desilvering step, the silver thus formed is oxidized in a bleaching bath, further changed into a soluble silver complex by the function of a fixing agent and then dissolved away.
In addition to these fundamental steps of color development processing described above, actual development processing involves various auxiliary steps for maintaining the photographic and physical quality of the resulting image or for improving the preservability of the image. For example, there are illustrated a hardening bath, a stopping bath, an image stabilizing bath and a water washing bath, etc.
In recent years, it has been strongly desired to accelerate the processing, that is, to shorten the processing time. In the above-described color development processing, there is a strong need to shorten the time for the desilvering step which occupies nearly one half of the total processing time.
In response to such a need to shorten the time for the desilvering step, there has been known a bleach-fixing solution, which contains an aminopolycarboxylic acid ferric ion complex salt and a thiosulfate in a single solution, as described in German Pat. No. 866,605. However, the bleaching power of the solution is very weak since an aminopolycarboxylic acid ferric ion complex salt which per se is weak in oxidizing power (bleaching power) and a thiosulfate which has a reducing power coexist in a single solution. Therefore, it is very difficult for the bleach-fixing solution to sufficiently achieve desilveration of color photographic materials for photographing of high sensitivity and high silver content and consequently it can not be employed for practical use.
On the other hand, for the purpose of increasing the bleaching power, there has been proposed a method wherein various bleach accelerators such as mercapto compounds, for example, those described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,858 are added to the bleaching bath, the bleach-fixing bath or a prebath thereof. However, the effects of these bleach accelerators are not necessarily sufficient when they are employed in a conventional processing method containing a bleaching bath and a fixing bath.
On the contrary, some of the inventors have previously found that acceleration of desilveration can be achieved and thus significant shortening of the processing time is possible by a method wherein a color photographic material is processed, after color development, with a bleaching bath and subsequently with a bleach-fixing bath, as described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 75352/86 and 75353/86 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application").
However, it has been found that another problem occurs, that is, magenta stain increases, although the time for desilvering is greatly reduced when the desilvering step is carried out using a bleaching bath and a subsequent bleach-fixing bath according to the above-described method.